Organic chemists are typically trained that organic compounds have to be synthesized as pure substances through well-planned reactions and scrupulous separation. In fields such as drug discovery, catalyst design and new material development, however, tens of thousands of organic compounds must be synthesized and tested to discover a few active ones. In the pharmaceutical industry, for example, synthesizing such a large number of compounds in the traditional way is too slow compared to the rapid emergence of new biological targets. A major factor limiting the productivity of orthodox solution (liquid) phase organic synthesis is the tedious separation process for the purification of products. High throughput organic synthesis, therefore, preferably integrates organic reactions with rapid purification/separation procedures.
Recently, fluorous synthetic and separation techniques have attracted the interest of organic chemists. In fluorous synthetic techniques, reaction components are typically attached to fluorous groups such as perfluoroalkyl groups to facilitate the separation of products. In general, fluorous-tagged molecules partition preferentially into a fluorous phase while non-tagged ones partition into an organic phase. Although fluorous synthetic and/or separation techniques are promising, such techniques are currently limited by a lack of availability of suitable fluorous tags.
It is thus very desirable to develop fluorous tagging compounds and methods of increasing the fluorous nature of compounds.